Every Anaconda Movie Ranked (Including 2025’s Reboot)

One of the most underrated movies of the late ’90s, Anaconda is like Roland Emmerich’s Godzilla in that it’s really just trying to be fun. However, while it took a while for Godzilla to be appreciated for its own merits, Anaconda found some fans almost immediately. For one, it wasn’t beholden to a major IP, so it didn’t disappoint anyone when it made no effort to stick to what had worked for that IP. And two, it really does do a great job of making the audience feel like they’re on an adventure. From moment one, when we see the snake stalk Danny Trejo’s character up the mast of his boat, we get the sense that this is a movie that is trying to scare us, and it succeeds, even if it doesn’t get enough the credit it deserves for its ability to build tension.

Even still, while the original Anaconda is a treasure, it had a mighty hard time establishing a franchise. We’ve gotten seven total and no two really even have the same personality. The good news it that their diverse tones make them easy to rank, at least for the most part. Let’s start with the three rough around the edges entries.

7) Anaconda 3: Offspring

The first three entries on our list are all direct-to-video cheap-o Syfy movies. In other words, even with the name brand they look atrocious and feature performances ranging from unbearable to subpar. It doesn’t matter if you have someone as great as Robert Englund in your movie, a dreadful script won’t do them any favors.

Syfy movies only work when you combine their shortcomings with a so-bad-it’s-good undercurrent. Anaconda 3: Offspring, even with David Hasselhoff of all people, is never so-bad-it’s-good. It’s just so-bad-it’s-dull.

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6) Anacondas: Trail of Blood

Anacondas: Trail of Blood is a slight improvement over the previous movie, but not by much. The plot is about five percent more engrossing, the acting isn’t entirely embarrassing, and it’s clear it was shot on location, whereas Trail of Blood was just green screen overload.

Even still, it wouldn’t be until the next movie that the charming so-bad-it’s-good quality came into play. This movie needed more of someone detonating a grenade from within an anaconda.

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5) Lake Placid vs: Anaconda

There’s a scene in Lake Placid vs. Anaconda that has a crocodile approaching a group of mercenaries (and a few others along for the ride). The lead mercenary tells the others not to shoot because it would be a federal offense. The croc begins chowing down on one of the party, and, after a pretty hefty amount of supper time, the one who warned about the federal offense says screw it and they blast it apart. Of course, by that point, the member of their party is in two pieces. One must assume that the whole illegality of shooting a croc goes out the window when someone’s thigh is in its mouth.

That’s the level of logic all of the film’s characters use. But the side effect is that it ends up being enjoyable in the silly kind of way, whereas the third and fourth movies are just slogs. Plus, this one has Robert Englund in it (reprising his role from Lake Placid: The Final Chapter). It even ends on a Predalien note, but no follow-up was ever released.

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4) Anacondas: The Hunt for the Blood Orchid

Until the metasequel, there was only one theatrical sequel to Anaconda, and it was a movie that felt absolutely nothing like the film that came before, much to its own detriment. But at least it isn’t a direct-to-video dud, and that’s why it’s placed this high.

There’s exactly one good scene in Anacondas: The Hunt for the Blood Orchid, and it’s the one most prominently featured in the trailer (outside perhaps the boat going over the waterfall). That’s when the cast of characters walk through a river and we get an overhead shot of the massive snake swimming between them. A jerk in the crew starts doing the Jaws theme to startle one of his female peers and is yanked underwater. She thinks he’s still joking, right up until an anaconda bursts of the water. You can basically just watch those three minutes and be done with it.

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3) Anaconda (2024)

A movie many people probably don’t know exists, China’s version of Anaconda (titled Anaconda: Cursed Jungle in the States) is easily as close as anyone has come to capturing the adventurous yet dangerous vibe the 1997 film nailed. It even loosely follows the structure of that original film.

The CGI is pretty solid, the acting is almost certainly the most serious the franchise has ever seen, and there’s plenty of snake action. There’s an argument to be made that this film should be in the number two spot, but the edge went to the newest addition to the saga for its ambition.

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2) Anaconda (2025)

Anaconda tries to pull off a little too much for its own good but overall, it’s a fine love letter to the ’97 movie. Oddly enough it’s functioning at its best not when it’s focusing on the snake (which is, unfortunately, entirely CGI) but rather when it’s focusing on Doug (Jack Black) and Griff’s (Paul Rudd) love for it.

There’s the occasional attempt to be scary, but for the most part the movie is trying to be funny and make a (somewhat half-hearted) statement about the current reboot culture that has consumed Hollywood. Black and Rudd are great, and though underutilized so too are Daniela Melchior, Steve Zahn, and Thandiwe Newton, but Anaconda (2025) is very much a 2 and a half star out of 5 movie.

1) Anaconda (1997)

Anaconda is not without its “Is that waterfall flowing backwards?” gaffes, but it’s overall a movie that doesn’t get nearly the level of credit it deserves. It may have been popular enough to get a reboot, but it wasn’t really a reboot so much as a newer project that thought the original wasn’t actually beloved enough to do again in similarly straightforward way. As the stars in the 2025 version movie say, their new take is a movie that’s actually about something.

But what’s wrong with just trying to be a when animals attack movie? That’s what Anaconda is and it succeeds in being just that, with little sprinkles of odd choices here and there (mostly from Jon Voight) that give it a nice grating of cheese on top. The film is sublimely paced, it makes the smart choice of gradually revealing the snake (which looks amazing when it’s the practical effects version, not so much the CGI one), the cast is all game, and it’s a nostalgia trip for ’90s kids. Anaconda is a delight, and it’s a shame we never got a sequel—preferably one released just several years after the original—that truly retained this film’s spirit.

The original movie deserves a few other shout-outs. For one, the first time we see the Anaconda, as it’s flailing and screaming behind the boat once Voight hooks it with a line, is the second-best beast reveal after “You’re gonna need a bigger boat” in Jaws. Two, the shot of the second, larger anaconda descending from the skylight in the third act is unforgettable. And three, the aforementioned third act is flat-out great all around. Voight’s Serone tying up Jennifer Lopez’s Terri Flores and Ice Cube’s Danny Rich only to then cover them with monkey blood then sit back and excitedly await a slithering death machine’s arrival? What a great establishment of danger, not that it works out so hot for Serone.

Stream Anaconda on Netflix.